Vi Congresso Nacional De Engenharia Mecânica Vi National Congress of Mechanical Engineering

The use of composite materials has been increasing in the aeronautical industry for use in primary structures, such as wing and fuselage, where it can significantly save structural weight. Composite laminate optimization can be done as a discrete variable problem constrained by material strength, buckling and natural frequency. The solution for discrete variable problem based on combinatorial optimization techniques is too costly and alternatives must be explored. In the present work a simple methodology has been applied to determine the optimal stacking sequence and the number of layers for composite plates using a technique based on the use of discrete variables applied to the PCOMP property cards of composite laminates (typical of commercial finite element codes). The structural optimization software GENESIS ® is used to implement the ideas for the composite laminate optimization. A simple composite plate is optimized to validate the methodology.